"This way," said Norton, taking up the lantern. "We can really make
you more comfortable than you'd think."
At the very least he could count confidently on treating her to a
surprise. She followed him for forty or fifty feet toward the end of
the cave and to an irregular hole in the side wall, through this, and
into another cave, smaller than the first, but as big as an ordinary
room. The floor was strewn with the short needles of the mountain
pine. As she turned, looking about her, she noted first another
opening in a wall suggesting still another cave; then, feeling a faint
breath of the night air on her cheek she saw a small rift in the outer
shell of rock and through it the stars thick in the sky.
"May you sleep well in Jim Galloway's hang-out," said Norton lightly.
"May you not be troubled with the ghosts of the old cliff-dwellers
whose house this was before our time. And may you always remember that
if there is anything in the world that I can do for you all you have to
do is let me know. Good night."
"Good night," she said.
He had left the lantern for her. She placed it on the floor and went
across her strange bedroom to the hole in the rock through which the
stars were shining. It seemed impossible that those stars out there
were the same stars which had shone upon her all of her life long.
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